Balancing climate change mitigation and national adaptation : experimental evidence on the influence of risk perceptions and information construal levels

Climate change can be addressed by mitigation and adaptation approaches at the national policy level. Since only limited resources are available for both strategies, it is key to unravel how ongoing climate developments and their communication influence the population’s preferences regarding the question “adaptation or mitigation?” Based on construal level theory and the construal matching premise, we hypothesize that when individuals are faced with an abstract tradeoff between mitigation and national adaptation, a larger national short-term risk perception extends prioritization of national adaptation measures, whereas an amplified global long-term risk perception or a lifted construal level of presented climate risks increases mitigation emphasis. To explore these hypotheses, we conducted an online framed field information experiment with a German population sample of 2,182 participants and find evidence for the hypothesized causal effects by conducting OLS regressions and mediator analyses. We argue for reevaluating current climate communication’s emphasis on psychologically close damages, as this approach may push people towards favoring adaptation strategies over essential mitigation measures and could thus entail undesirable side effects.